Saturday while headed to Txcajun's house my front valve stem broke. It took about a mile for it to go completely down and about half a mile for me to realise what was going on, get slowed down and to the shoulder. It's a weird feeling and I hope I never have a front tire blow at speed. I have no doubt that it would result in a crash.
Anyway, I called Randy to tell him I wasn't going to be there anytime soon. I told him that I was going to call HRCA to come take my bike to Cowboy Honda in Beaumont with hopes they would stop by my house and let me pick up a front tire I had bought during HDL's last sale. At the time I didn't know it was just the valve stem. I figured I had another nail like I had experienced three day earlier in my rear tire. Randy said he would call to see how late Cowboy would be open while I called HRCA. I stayed on hold for about 5 minutes and gave up when Randy called back and had called two dealers and was planning to come get me with his lowboy. I had remembered there was a MC dealer about a mile up the road that dealt only in off road bikes, 4 wheelers and jet skis. I told Randy I was going to limp the bike up there and at the worst, lock my bike up while I made arrangements to get it someplace else.
When I got to the dealer, I ask if they could mount a tire for me and they said yes, but that they didn't have any tires that would fit my bike. I told them I had one at the house which was only about 8 miles away. The owner goes out to look at the tire and ask if I had tried to air it up since it went down. I explained that it had just happened and he was my first stop. We took the bike around back and as soon as he went to put the air hose to it he discovered the problem. I called Randy got his voice mail and told him what was going on.
I told dealer if I could borrow some tools that I would start taking the wheel off. Short of the long is they put a new valve stem in and the tire held up. It was about this time that Randy walked in ready to take me to get my tire. I was elated that I didn't have to use my spare tire since this one only had about 2 thousand miles on it. I will say, it took them three tries to get the wheel back on. They swapped the spacers and then realised they had the rotation wrong and then had it back together in nothing flat. I had guarded praise for them but then realised they did pretty good for not servicing road bikes.
Here's the clincher....I ask what I owed and the guy says $13.75. I think he knew what I had in my wallet, which was exactly $13.00. I explained to the guy that I had plastic and that $13.00 was too cheap for taking the wheel off, breaking the tire down and putting the wheel back on. He could have charged me $80 and I wouldn't have bitched. $13.00 was it.
So, The Outpost on highway 96, just North of the Silsbee exist on the way to Eva dale will now be getting a lot of my business.
A special thanks goes out to Randy (txcajun) too for stopping what he was doing and driving 60 miles to help a fellow rider out. He had a slide-bed on standby just in case.
Just a word of warning, if Randy beats you off the line with his truck, be prepared to breathe soot . Yes, that big truck will get it. Of course I was a little apprehensive about getting down on a freshly repaired tire. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
